The State of Adventure Gaming

By Randy Sluganski
January 1999

Hello fellow adventure gamers!

It's 10 degrees below zero, my phone lines are down, there's eight inches of snow outside and yet I am as happy as a grue with a belly full of adventurer. Why? Work called this morning (before the power failure) and told me not to come in, with pay! What to do for the next three days? Hmmmm ...

I realize that it is only the second week of the new year, but a review I have just read of Valve's Half-Life in the February 1999 issue of Next Generation magazine has to contain the funniest sentence I will read all year. NG deservedly gives Half-Life a 5-star rating and pronounces it as "one of the best PC action adventure titles ever." But in the same breath the unnamed reviewer also proclaims, "... Half-Life's much-vaunted plot scenario can occasionally get in the way of the action." Heaven forbid! A plot in an action game! Are adventure gamers beginning to subtly take-over the world?! Maybe Roberta Williams's prediction of adventure aspects gradually penetrating other gaming genres is finally coming to fruition.

Speaking of Roberta, I hope that many JA readers took the opportunity to listen to her live interviews in December on TalkSpot. More recently Lori Coles has appeared, and it seems there are also plans for Jane Jensen and Al Lowe to be interviewed later this year. Don't miss a great opportunity to talk live to your favorite Sierra game designers. Just follow the link above for dates and times.

What's in the works for JA this month? Well we will be ringing in the New Year with reviews of Redguard, Quest for Glory V, Reah and a few more surprises. We promise that our "Best of Awards" will be like nothing you have read on any other web site, and we have some extremely interesting correspondence ready to be posted in our letters section. Plus, we will have the first entries in our "Just Adventure Hall of Fame," not to mention another visit to the Dungeon of Shame, a sprinkling of Blast from the Past reviews and some great new reviews for our Just Adventure Kids section. Interviews with Dark Side of the Moon writer Lee Sheldon and the developers of Big Brother are on tap. To top it all off, Craig and I (two avowed adventure gamers) will be relating our experiences as we attempted to play the aforementioned action/adventure game, Half-Life. The operative word here is "attempted."

Finally, there are lots of new adventure and action/adventure games in the works for the new year, and we promise to try our best to be the first and the most dependable in supplying news on the adventure front. Big Brother, Gabriel Knight 3, Simon 3, Discworld Noir, The Real Neverending Story, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and many others will be vying to empty our pocketbooks and wallets. I also have advance word on a few new unannounced adventure games from some major companies who have sworn me to secrecy, but rest assured that Just Adventure will be at the forefront of trumpeting these new releases to the adventure world.

Here's looking at you, kid.